Currently known in certain geographical locations are options for consumers to subscribe to “green energy”. The term ‘green energy’ has been described as a source of energy which is considered to be environmentally friendly and non-polluting. Such a source may be solar, wind, biomass, or hydro energy. In many urban and rural areas with energy choices, consumers have the ability to obtain electricity from renewable sources, albeit often for a higher cost based upon the maturity of related technologies. Many consumers would be interested in having more options for selecting green energy sources. Additionally, consumers may also wish to select power based on geopolitical data about the provider and originating location for the energy source.
Power costs are a significant portion of the budget of an enterprise, especially for those managing data centers. Consumers are seeking ways to improve their profitability by reducing their power costs. It is evident that consumers such as industrial, residential, or commercial, lack reliable and up-to-date information about what is available to them in power markets at any given time. Currently, a consumer can only know what the published rates are from a point prior to the current time, typically on a monthly cycle. The power industry is rapidly moving towards a model that other industries, such as the stock market and fuel industry, have achieved, which involves dynamically changing prices for a commonly used commodity. For such an environment, there is only one method known today which could be used to understand what the current cost per unit of energy is for any specific location, and that would be publishing the rates on web accessible internet or private intranet where authorized consumers could look up the cost of the supplied energy. This is an inefficient and limiting method which if implemented would require an extreme amount of logistical coordination and updates. There exists, therefore, a need for a more efficient method of publishing data on cost, source, origination, etc. so that consumers can reliably and efficiently make energy consumption decisions.
Current means for dynamically communicating and selecting power providers based on costs and other criteria in a real-time manner are limited. A retail electricity market exists when end-use consumers can choose their supplier from competing electricity retailers. One term used for this type of consumer choice is ‘energy choice’. A separate issue for electricity markets is whether or not consumers receive real-time pricing, that is, prices based on the variable wholesale price, or a price that is set in some other way, such as average annual costs. In many markets, consumers do not pay based on the real-time price, and hence have no incentive to reduce demand at times of high, wholesale, prices or to shift their demand to other periods. Demand response may use pricing mechanisms or technical solutions to reduce peak demand.
Generally, electricity retail reform follows from electricity wholesale reform. However, it is possible to have a single electricity generation company and still have retail competition. If a wholesale price can be established at a node on the transmission grid and the electricity quantities at that node can be reconciled, competition for retail consumers within the distribution system beyond the node is possible. In the German market, for example, large, vertically integrated utilities compete with one another for consumers on a more or less open grid.